Things at Etihad Arena are progressively heating up as the BLAST Premier ‘22 World Final moves into its final stages, with only four of the hottest teams remaining in the battle.
Yesterday’s quarterfinals delivered two beautiful Counter-Strike matches that left us all in awe as Liquid and G2 dismantled CS:GO powerhouses Na’Vi and Vitality to secure their spots in the semifinal clashes that will soon go down in front of Abu Dhabi’s audience.
Every CS:GO player has good and bad matches, but the best ones peak at the right time. That’s exactly what happened with YEKINDAR, whose epic performance in this match was the main key to Team Liquid’s victory over Natus Vincere. With staggering 73 frags, he was by far the most impactful player on the server.
The first game started on Na’Vi’s pick Overpass — an unexpected decision since this map is not among their strongest. However, their goal was seemingly to punish Liquid’s apparent Overpass weakness, which didn’t work out well for the CIS squad. Liquid displayed great tactical skill from the start, winning both halves with ease — 9:6 and 7:4.
On the second map Ancient, Na’Vi first let Liquid take a significant 11:4 lead before surprising their opponents with a great deal of unexpected moves in the second half. Thanks to b1t’s spectacular performance, Na’Vi claimed the second map 14:16 before moving to Mirage.
Here, B1ad3 decided to give npl another chance to play, however, he was outplayed on numerous occasions by oSee, YEKINDAR, and nitr0. Not even s1mple’s efforts were enough to overcome Liquid’s drive to win, and after losing the third map 9:16, the defending BLAST Premier Champions Na’Vi had to depart the competition to make room for the new kings of CS:GO.
What an absolute barnstormer of a match! It’s hard not to be fascinated by what m0NESY does, and although the future of the young talent is not yet known, one thing is for sure — he’s on his way to becoming a CS:GO legend!
On the first map of the match, Nuke, it seemed like no matter where Vitality players went, m0NESY was there, always ready to strike. This gave Vitality quite a hard time, and even ZywOo finished the map with a negative K-D score. With complete dominance, G2 pretty much won the map in the first half — 12:3 into 16:3.
The second map Vertigo, however, was much tougher for them. The two teams took turns at winning consecutive rounds but in the end, following a few overtime rounds, Vitality prevailed with the final score of 15:19.
The match was decided on the new map Anubis. While the first half was rather balanced and very close, in the second half, G2 retook authority again and claimed the last semifinal spot by defeating Vitality 16:11.
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